The Dottore moved closer.
The Origamist was forced to step back or have a leather beak in his eye. “You’re far more powerful than I am. I know that. You could probably use the First Story all by yourself, without the need of—”
The Dottore lifted a leather-gloved hand and waved a finger back and forth in front of the Origamist’s face.
“Yes, I realize that Droll Mary would stop you, but I’m having to deal with the entire Council of Aspects and defectors and…”
The Dottore bent low, the hook of his leather nose pressed close to the Origamist, the smell of rosemary strong and pervasive. The Origamist stood his ground and nodded. Lifting his leather bound hand, the Dottore held out an aged slip of parchment. The Origamist smiled; a self-satisfied sigh lifted his spirits.
“The Second Story.” The Origamist took the piece of parchment and looked at the stylized eye drawn in ancient ink. “The Eye of Horus is the Second Story?”
The Dottore turned and headed back into the shadow. The Origamist looked to the horizon. The mountain range in the distance held the promise of stopping the Council from reconstructing the old world. Behind him was the sea. He turned and headed for the shore.
Chapter 66
It took a moment for his mother’s words to penetrate Matt’s concentration, but eventually, he looked up from the clock and stood. His mother led him out of the hospital and into their house. He went to his room and shut the door.
His clock radio, with its constant red numerals, did not tick. The last number turned into another number, and Matt understood that time was still passing. Even without the tick, tick, tick, time was moving forward, inexorably toward an ending. He didn’t have much more time to save his friend.
He grabbed his sketchbook from his desk and sprawled out on his bed. He flipped through the pages, the drawings, until he came to the one that John had started. It was a new character that he had been working on: merely a list of characteristics, a meager description, and suggestions of attributes, but the true beginning of an original character, maybe his last.
“No!” Matt said too loudly, then too softly to be overheard, “This is not his last character. This is just the latest. That’s right. And I can finish it.”
He curled his fingers around a UB pencil and began to memorize the lists John had made. There was something special about this character. John had had a gleam in his eye whenever he had discussed it.
“I have to get this right,” Matt said before turning to a fresh page and pressing the pencil to the white paper.
Chapter 67
Abend
She got up, out of the cut of a thousand fallen buildings, and looked around. Her home, her street, her city was lying in rubble. The sun was low in the sky, not sunset yet; there was still time. Kicking the loose rocks of her former world, she hurried to find a safe place.
The half walls of ruined buildings, the piles of materials that used to form shops and restaurants and homes, offered no hope of shelter. She kept walking farther and farther, beyond the places she once knew. The Gloaming Woods appeared in front of her much sooner than she had expected.
Her trusty rifle, always at her side, felt unnaturally heavy as she stepped off the last remnants of cement and onto the soft carpet of dead leaves and pine needles. She unfastened the strap and let the rifle fall to the earth—and it was earth, not a layer of cement covering an underfloor of steel. It was…completely unfamiliar but something that Roald would have loved to see. He had always been the one to ask questions, to probe the mysteries. Everyone agreed that Abend had the bravery, but Roald got all of the curiosity. Roald was the reason they had broken free of the Collective; he was the reason Abend could now leave the ruins of the world behind and experience the trees. Abend let her rifle rest on the forest floor, the soft organic carpet, so distant from the cement and steel, and she would let it stay there because there was no longer a need to fight with a rifle. Someone else had won the war.
A chill wind blew, and Abend pulled her flak jacket closer around her shivering body, but the heat was too intense, and the wind wasn’t as chill as she had first surmised. Instead of needed warmth, the jacket offered constraint, too much like the prison camps where she and Roald had spent their entire childhood. Abend had escaped, but Roald… Abend slipped her arms from the heavy jacket and let it fall.
“You can do this, Abend.” She tried to believe the words, whispered in the strange surroundings. The indoctrination clinic had tried to break her will well before the City fell, and she had resisted them for so long, so very long. She had fought her way to freedom alone, unwilling to be categorized, unrepentant about her desire for freedom. She would not falter now. She would not lie down with the ruins of her former life. She could still stand strong, just as her father had done before the rebellion was put down. She was her father’s daughter. She would never submit to a world of conformity.
Renewed and refreshed, or pretending to be, she tied her hair into a loose ponytail and pushed up the sleeves of her dirty long-sleeved sweatshirt. Her combat boots were snug and comfortable. Her camouflage pants were perfectly matched to the trees around her, which she found interesting since no one she knew had ever seen a tree. Everyone she knew was a soldier, a well-trained, disciplined soldier. She, herself, was the very image of a soldier, but she still felt something was off. Her mother used to call that feeling of something missing a lost hope. She used to say that feeling like something was wrong, missing, or out-of-place was due to forgetting something hoped for or wished for or longed for. Remembering what that was would turn the feeling into completeness. Abend missed her mother.
The ruins of the City lay behind her, the unknown forest sat in front, and she knew the choice she had to make. Her world had ended violently, completely, and she was in desperate need of a new world. She stepped forward, a finger of fading sunlight streaming across her grit-stained face. Her steely eyes, so much like her mother’s, shone with determination. There was a place for her ahead. A place to belong, a place to continue the fight for a new world, a place full of friends. Pushing hard against the thorny bushes barring her path, she cut and scratched her way toward the weedy remains of a path.
One way sported additional thorny roadblocks; the other promised more sunshine. She made her choice quickly and hacked away at the bushes with her hunting knife and bare hands.
Chapter 68
More Flux
Flux hung back, allowing the others to forge the path just at the edge of the horizon, a feeling of ‘otherness’ tugging at fragile emotions. The others had welcomed Flux, mostly but not completely. Some didn’t trust Flux; that was clear, and there were some Flux did not trust. Something indefinable, untenable complicated everyone’s comfort, pulled Flux in awkward directions. It was something commonplace and strange, an unforgiving temptation gnawing at desire.
“Flux?” The word came from the underbrush, carried by a voice as familiar as it was new. The name attached to the voice was also draped in the familiar strangeness.
“Abend?” Flux spoke to the eyes staring out from the green. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.” Abend bent forward, allowing her face to fall into sight. “Do they have you prisoner?”
Flux looked ahead and saw the others talking softly in the center of the path, pointing in different directions; a wall of caves directly over the horizon loomed ahead. “No, they are…friends, I think.”
Abend stepped onto the path and placed a hand of greeting on her friend’s shoulder. “That’s good. We will need friends to help us rebuild the City.”
“Rebuild the…” Flux remembered Abend’s story, the dystopian world that she inhabited where the adults fought to put all of the children into well-defined groups. Her parents had fought the orderliness of this world, and Abend had been part of that fight. It was just a story. “Abend, you need to step out of your storyline.”
“What?” Abend stepped back, her hand going directly to her hunting knife.
> “We are story Aspects, Elements, and Plot Devices, and we inhabit Creativity.” Flux attempted to appear sincere and honest, but deceit crept into the mix.
“You lie!” Abend shoved Flux.
“You know Flux does not.” The Origamist stepped from the Woods but stood well beyond the sight of the others.
“You can’t win.” Flux moved to stand between the Origamist and Abend.
“If I don’t win, then we all lose.” The Origamist sounded earnest, but Flux sensed something just below his words.
“Flux says we are just story aspects. Is that true?” Abend leaned forward and stared at the Origamist, her eyes filled with confusion.
“You are a new Aspect.” The Origamist sighed and patted Abend on the head. “Flux has forgotten what it was like to be newly flung into Creativity. It takes time to be able to step out of your storyline.”
“Thanks to you,”—Flux slapped the Origamist’s hand away from Abend’s head—“we don’t have the time. Old Aspects and new ones are in danger of being erased.”
“Not erased.” The Origamist shook his head, his brow furrowed and stern. “Never erased. Don’t you see? What I do, what I’ve done is only to preserve—”
“Stop him!” Baba Vedma was running toward them, her hands waving erratically. The Sister of Monsters was pointing and shouting something that was lost in the forest. The Toy Peddler was close on Baba Vedma’s heels, and Frau Iver’s indistinct face was rife with anger.
Flux grabbed Abend and tried to pull her away, but she fought and moved closer to the Origamist. “Can you help me? I’m so—”
“Come with me.” The Origamist took Abend’s hand in his own and with the other, pushed Flux hard. Flux stumbled back, tumbling over an exposed root just as Baba Vedma stomped to a halt in front of the place where the Origamist had been.
“Where…?” The Toy Peddler skidded up next to Baba Vedma.
“The bushes be folded in on themselves.” Baba Vedma pointed to the severe lack of a trail. She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Nothing. I see no way to be catchin’ him now.”
Frau Iver floated to the bushes, and a sound like a scream, so high-pitched as to be nearly inaudible, shot into the leafy barricade. Frost, then ice pulled and tugged but achieved nothing notable.
“I told you.” Baba Vedma put her hands on her hips and turned to Flux. “What be that all about?”
Flux struggled to an upright position. “He said that he was trying to preserve something.”
“Does that look like preservation to you?” Baba Vedma pointed to the spindly remnants of a particularly tall building.
“Who was the other one?” The Sister of Monsters joined them.
“Abend.” Flux said, and the word prompted a recitation of a new familiar story. They saw the girl growing up in a ruined world, being assigned a position, balking at the restrictions, gaining love, losing love, and lamenting love, all while struggling to free her world.
“A new Aspect.” The Sister of Monsters paced along the path. “A very complicated one.”
“How many new Aspects does that make?” The Toy Peddler motioned to Flux.
“I’m not new.” Flux looked slightly offended.
“Well, you be not old.” Baba Vedma dismissively waved her craggy hand.
“I used to be called Clarity.” Flux stomped toward the mountains.
Chapter 69
Clarity
He walked through the stony corridor, his hand using the rough-hewn walls for support as he went. The meager light from the candelabra created ominous shapes, shadowy designs, monstrous thoughts. The corridor cut deep into the earth.
Above him, the house he had built from the ground up sat empty, devoid of even a hint of life. In front of him, the corridor, ancient, tool-marked, and impossible, stretched through the darkness, and within the darkness was something inky, driven, alive.
He had discovered the corridor while building the wine cellar. He had warned his wife not to venture near the corridor. He had returned from a trip into town to find his wife gone, her shawl lying at the entrance.
“Hello!” he shouted into the blackness. His own voice returned to him repeatedly, partially, dimly.
A chill wafted through the dark. Shivering yet determined, he moved through the chill, wrapping his overcoat closer to his body. The chill grew, becoming stinging, forceful. He bowed his head, hiding his face from the bite.
“Sarah!” he shouted, hoping that his wife would somehow find her way back to him.
The silence that greeted him highlighted the lack of an echo so clearly that he shivered even more. His hand, still using the wall for support, was suddenly sinking into the handholds that were no longer firm stone but had become gushy, moist, fleshy. He jerked his hand back and wiped it on his coat while holding the candlelight closer to the wall.
Sparkles oozed from the walls, trailing down the ruddy bulwark blocking his path. He lifted the candelabra up, then down, and seeing no end to the barrier, he turned about in a complete circle. The corridor was no more. There was only the fleshy barrier on all sides. He fell to his knees, the earth beneath him giving under his weight and collapsing into a new corridor, this one heading down.
He fell for what felt like an eternity, never touching anything other than his own body, never seeing anything other than darkness. Still, he fell, tumbling, turning, twirling in endless space until, suddenly, he was no longer falling. He floated in the boundless expanse of nothing; tears pushed their way from his eyes and then lingered before his face. Stillness, silence so all-encompassing as to be painful, shrouded his head. He wanted to scream but found the effort too daunting.
He thought to lift his hand to his throat, but his arm would not respond. He thought to flex his hand, but his hand refused to move. He thought to move just a finger, just one finger, the simplest of things, just wiggle one finger. Just one. Just one. Pain, stabbing, twisting, relentless pain but not physical, never physical, moved around him, replacing darkness with breathlessness, with despair, with torment.
He awoke, sitting straight up in bed. Sarah slept soundly beside him, her breath even and strong. He shook his head to make sure that he could. He lifted and bent his arm, to assure himself that everything was normal. He looked at his wife and knew that in the morning, he would leave her.
Chapter 70
The Sea
The Origamist pulled Abend through the briar-tangles and limb-webs until they reached the sea. A dock, a cache of ships, and an open horizon awaited them. The Origamist boarded a mid-sized ship and motioned for Abend to follow.
“Where are we going?” Abend awkwardly climbed the gangplank, trying desperately not to end up in the churning waters. “I thought you were going to help me.”
“I’m going to help everyone.” The Origamist knelt on the damp planks of the deck, producing a folded piece of parchment from his robe. Carefully, he opened the parchment and set it down, smoothing the slight wrinkles as best he could. “Come here.” He took Abend’s hand and pulled at her until she knelt beside him. “Like this.” He held his hands flat, palms down, over the parchment.
“What are you doing?” Abend positioned her hands as the Origamist instructed.
“I’m going to get us a proper Council.” The Origamist closed his eyes, his hands swirled over the Eye of Horus. Abend stared down at the stylized bird/eye thing and watched as the dark outlines appeared to shiver.
⚬⚬⚬⚬⚬
“This one.” The Puppeteer pointed to a cave and entered quickly.
“This is hopeless.” The Angler followed. “This cave is just like the others. We’re going to have our emotions toyed with, or we’re going to suddenly remember a dream that wasn’t a dream, or—” His words fell as heavily as his foot against the deck of the ship.
“Welcome.” The Origamist rose and nodded to the Puppeteer and then to the Angler.
“How did you…?” The Puppeteer watched as the Origamist held out the parchment. “The Second Sto
ry? You used the Second Story to transport us from the Caves to…a boat?”
“I thought I would save you some searching.” The Origamist held the Second Story in one hand and then opened the other, holding it toward the Angler. “The First Story please.”
“You’re crazy if you think we’re just going to give you…” The Puppeteer tried to continue but his mouth was suddenly very heavy.
“What are you doing to him?” The Angler kept the Puppeteer from falling but nearly dropped him as he saw the blocky, wooden jaw attached to the animated face.
“I’m just putting him back the way he was.” The Origamist waved his hand over the Second Story, pausing briefly to pull Abend a bit closer. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
The Puppeteer’s feet shrunk with a hiss of air; his arms fluttered and fell to his sides; his head, now partially wooden, blurred, then fizzed; then the Puppeteer, the little wooden boy, stood revealed.
The Angler stood back as the Puppeteer regained his balance. “Why would you—”
“Because of that.” The Origamist pointed to the shore where the ruins of the City could be seen just over the horizon. “This fight is just destructive. We need a better way.”
“Then, you don’t want to remake the world in your image anymore?” The Angler felt the weight of the First Story in his pocket. It was so very heavy.
“I never…” The Origamist paused and reevaluated his words. “You have to understand. I saw the change coming. There was nothing anyone could do. I only wanted to direct the change.”
“What change?” The Puppeteer’s hollow voice pulsed over the waters like the whisper of an empty house.
“Surely you’ve noticed the new Aspects.” The Origamist indicated Abend. “They were popping up everywhere, in all genres, even affecting the Duality.”
“There have always been new Aspects appearing.” The Puppeteer tried to soften his voice, but his wooden throat did not allow it.
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